


Other Means

by Necronon



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Blood and Gore, First Time, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-14 01:28:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13583112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Necronon/pseuds/Necronon
Summary: Hannibal’s timing couldn’t be better; Will is a cocktail of tender and aroused that keeps him from his anxiety. Keeps him from a lot of second thoughts he should be having over his chosen bed fellow.





	Other Means

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chronicopheliac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chronicopheliac/gifts).



> Some violence and dirty to fill some prompts. Come talk to me about art and writing over on my [tumblr.](http://thenecronon.tumblr.com/)

  


Will sits on the crumbling steps that meander up to their insular villa, scoring an apple with a knife and grousing over his smarting knees. He’s too old for idyllic, fairy-tale homes in the middle of BFE—Hannibal’s eccentricity is insufferable—but the balmy afternoons with their cool air rolling in off the South Atlantic are almost recompense enough. The nostalgic smell of brine and earth is mollifying, and Will frequently spends evenings, after a day of laboring, watching the sea.

Their home (When had he started thinking of it as theirs?) looks east atop a wind-beaten cliff scoured of trees. Each morning, light floods their open kitchen and sets it ablaze, like their last Baltimore sunset had done while they deliberated over death and new beginnings. A poignant evening before his baptism by blood. _Their consummation_. Every day since feels like the day after, months of convalescing and grappling for identity—or accepting a newfound one. Hannibal says “set free”; will says “unhitched,” and he’s still reaching. He knows where Hannibal hopes he anchors, knows it when Hannibal lingers after him, eyes and hands. Ever after his precious _folie à deux._

Some part of Will knows this whimsical but impractical place is destined for more than their convalescence. Hannibal’s brought them here to let the paint dry, to cement something. To ground whatever fizzles between them.

From his perch, he sees for miles. The occasional herd of seals crowds the beach below, barking at gulls. Once, a pod of orcas, dorsal fins slicing frothy furrows through the water. He’s considered telling Hannibal but hasn’t worked up to it. They haven’t spoken for a week, maybe longer. They barely share the same square footage, with a single exception.

If one aspect of their old lives has endured, it’s dinner. It’s Will sitting placidly across from Hannibal, exotic dish after dish, as nothing changes. Lost on the lam. Will has found some semblance of routine through manual labor, belatedly realizing that Hannibal’s insistence on a serviceable house with some dilapidation was no coincidence. Laying pricey tile and repairing terracotta shingles instead of boat motors. It’s not what he needs though. There’s something kinetic just under the surface. He’s hungry for more than _foie gras_ and discourse.

But he can’t go to Hannibal, can’t _ask_ _,_ not for that. It has to present itself, like their feasts. With Hannibal, however, he never has to ask.

Just as the sun touches the horizon, cutting a fiery swathe between sea and sky, a long shadow jumps across him. The core of his apple tumbles down a few steps as he’s wrenched back by his hair and an elbow hooks his throat, forearm jammed against the back of his neck. His assailant knows how to choke a man—knows Italian, too, if listening to Hannibal’s monologues has taught him anything. Fortunately it’s not Will’s first time in a stranglehold. He bypasses scrabbling at the man’s arms and plunges his knife into his soft flank. After he’s released, he blinds the man with his thumbs, sinking them deep into his skull. The Italian grapples with him, howling in pain, rage, or both. Will finds his knife and opens the man’s belly. Not with a surgical smile, but an ugly tug. The stench of shit and blood is nauseating. The man might have lived long enough to succumb to sepsis, if Will hadn’t continued dismantling him.

Once he starts, he can’t stop. It’s only after the body sprawls limp and silent, and Will looks down on his work, wrist-deep in hot gut, that he realizes he knows the man. He’s seen his face on TV, a dodgy looking foreigner with suspected ties to the Calabrian mafia. There are ligature marks on his hands and ankles, fresh, and a pointedly empty holster for a concealed weapon beneath his suit jacket. Here to tour the narco-state countryside, and he won’t go missed—they’re going to have to move again.

Or . . . was Hannibal finally trying to—

“Just in time.”

Will stands, shaking red pulp from his hand, and pivots to face Hannibal a few steps down and wearing a soft smile, eyes crawling up from Will’s red hands to his dilated eyes. “Thought we were even on this count.”

“Did you?”

“He tried to kill me,” says Will, catching his breath. “You _wanted_ him to.”

“I wanted him to try.” Hannibal starts up the steps, closing the distance between them, and Will makes fists of his hands and braces.

“D-don’t.”

Hannibal cranes his head and wets his lips, flashing the tip of a pink tongue and sharp incisor. “You’re looking peaky, Will.” Hannibal’s redistribution of weight is imperceptible except for the gravel crunching under the toe of a single, polished Oxford. Will can foresee the impending advance in the line of his shoulders, in the sharpness of his eyes.

The disc of the setting sun hangs in them like flourished blades.

Like a promise kept overly long.

“ _Hannibal—”_

Will whirls around as Hannibal lunges, crooked fingers grazing his forearm as he bolts up the stairs. He’s already exhausted, relying on adrenaline to carry him the rest of the way. He’s younger, but he’s not faster, not stronger.

Will kicks the front doors shut only for Hannibal to vault through a window, hot on his heels. There’s no advantage to be gleaned from retreat; it’s the delay he’s after. If he can push this moment back a second more, he will; but he knows better than to expect Hannibal to change his mind.

Will goes down at the top of the stairs, heel slipping on the ornate runner that leads down the second-story hall to the master bedroom and bath: Hannibal’s territory. Rooms Will hasn’t seen inside since they first settled into the house.

He manages to twist onto his back before Hannibal sets on him, quick to secure the wrist of Will’s armed hand. Will lets out a hoarse, mounting cry that stretches on and on as Hannibal squeezes, another hand on his throat, until the pain of the pressure point forces the knife out of his hand. Will could play dirty, go for the eyes like he did with the late trafficker on his stoop, but he can’t bring himself to do it. It’s not intimate. Not like this, either at the other’s throat, all hands and burden.

Hannibal has better leverage, but instead of using it to choke Will out, he pushes into the vice grip on his own neck and seats himself atop Will, then—

—oh, the asphyxiation had done other things to Will’s body, and Hannibal is apparently not above playing a dirty.

“Is this,” Hannibal ekes out, little more than a reedy rasp, “how you... imagined it, Will?”

“N-no.” Because he was on top, and the blood on his knuckles was Hannibal’s. But there is blood, on Hannibal now—a hand print, like warpaint, over a sculpted cheek and brow. Will’s fury stamped onto him. Blood drying on his neck and in his collar, on his white, pristine sleeves. This, Will thinks hysterically, is beautiful too.

Hannibal rolls his hips, a liquid motion, and Will rolls his eyes—right back into his skull because he’s starting to fade. His vision tunnels, and just before his grip fails, Hannibal interlocks their hands, the ones not cinching throats, in an unnecessarily affectionate squeeze before pulling back and jerking Will upright. Will doesn’t have time to orient himself—Hannibal’s urging him up onto his feet and forward as his head spins.

He’s ushered down the hall, then a hand at the back of his neck squeezes as Hannibal commands, “Look,” in an abused voice.

Too dizzy to disobey, he forces his eyes open and sees... himself, clothes and hair mussed. Wearing an animal expression. Snarling. Hannibal has stood him before a full-length mirror in what Will assumes is his bedroom. Just over his left shoulder, Hannibal joins in the exhibition, head canted and tucked close to Will’s ear. Both of their faces are an angry red from strangulation, necks corded and soon to bruise.

“Look,” he says again, more softly. “How radiant you are.”

Hannibal’s rapturous gaze immediately cows Will’s violence. His chest heaves but his posture sags. He leans his head back on Hannibal’s broad shoulder and rattles out a breath, lungs on fire. Pain blossoms in his chest with each inhale, and Will feels, in that moment, exactly that: radiant. Alive. The afterglow of the Dragon had faded and left him wanting, and now he realizes to what extent.

— _now that he has a taste for it._

Without any real premeditation, Will reaches back, cards his fingers through Hannibal’s hair, and initiates an awkward but fevered kiss that, when they finally pull apart, leaves Hannibal sighing into his ear. The faint quiver in the hand on Will’s hip and abdomen, just over his smile, and the hot breath down his neck is uniquely satisfying. Hannibal raw and reduced: a thing of Will’s nightmares and dreams alike. That, too, leaves Will wanting.

Of course Hannibal isn’t going to kill him. Not yet. And he sure as hell isn’t giving anyone else the honors. So... “The body outside,” Will says.

Hannibal noses through Will’s damp curls, pausing only long enough to respond. “A gift.”

“You bring gifts home all the time. This goes a little above and beyond.”

“You were still healing, before...”

“And?”

“I might have indulged tradition.”

Will abruptly remembers the elaborate—even by Hannibal’s standards—breakfast that morning, the fresh snapdragon in the vase, and the peculiar haste with which Hannibal had excused himself before Will could question any of it.

Then it hits him:

“It’s... Valentine’s Day.” Will peers slowly at Hannibal, bewildered. “He wasn’t a gift. He was a Valentine.”

“Admittedly not a wholly altruistic one. I’ve always immensely enjoyed your righteous violence.”

“You didn’t want to kill me.”

“Not today, I think. Though death becomes you.” Hannibal paws at Will’s sides, large hands skating over his hip bones scandalously close to his groin. For all their lack of proximity in the past months, Hannibal seems ready to remedy it.

“At least you didn’t— _ah_ —turn him into origami. Anyways, you can’t have your Patroclus and eat him too.” Will pitches forward a little and gasps as Hannibal nips at his ear and presses a wet kiss behind it. “I think I... might like to explore those other means of influence.”

“An hors d'oeuvre, then. A little death,” Hannibal mumbles into his neck, sucking an earlobe in his mouth.

Will shudders as Hannibal thumbs the button on his jeans—not popping it open, not touching, just hooking his thumbs into belt loops and pressing Will back against him, pulling the tired denim taut so it frames his erection. Honey-red eyes in the mirror, watching Will watch him, his hands.

“I want . . . May I take you to bed?” Hannibal asks, breathes, against his cheek.

“I’m a mess . . . ”

“You will be.”

  


* * *

 

  


Hannibal’s timing couldn’t be better; Will is a cocktail of tender and aroused that keeps him from his anxiety. Keeps him from a lot of second thoughts he should be having over his chosen bed fellow.

He expects a lot of things when Hannibal lays him back on his ridiculous bed—citing Dante or the origin of his sheets—but Hannibal’s quiet. Well, quiet as far as intelligible vocalizations go. Will’s sure it sounds like he’s getting fucked by an animal, and he’s not entirely sure the racket is Hannibal’s alone.

In reality, and what he expects least of all, is how thoroughly gentle Hannibal’s lovemaking is. Noise aside, he’s not getting laid—he’s being worshiped, and the resulting high he’s riding? He’s starving for it. He’s never felt quite like this, not without piggybacking on his partner’s pleasure, and even then . . .

It’s agonizingly slow, back-bending, and horrifyingly genuine. They stay eye-locked, even though the supplicating look in Hannibal’s eyes makes Will’s chest seize, and when he finally, finally comes, he bites his lips bloody and pulls welts down Hannibal’s bowed back with mean fingers, dimly aware of Hannibal locking up and doing the same.

It feels like forever before they pull apart. Never-minding the mess and settling in for sleep, Will thinks, a little hysterically, that Hannibal, a known cannibal and _you-name-it_ , is the best sex he’s ever had. And he’s okay with that.

At least, until morning.

  


  



End file.
